How Securities Are Traded - ftsmodules.com · How Securities Are Traded What is this project about? You will learn how securities are traded on exchanges, particularly how to conduct

© 2014 OS Financial Trading System Page 1

How Securities Are Traded

What is this project about?

You will learn how securities are traded on exchanges, particularly how to conduct margin

trades, short sales, and submit limit orders.

What case do I use?

You can use any stock trading case, such as the FTS 30 Stock Case, the FTS 1000 Stock Case, or

the international stock cases. The case will be selected by your instructor.

What are the pre-requisites?

A basic understanding of financial instruments such as stocks and stock exchanges.

How much time does it take?

It takes two weeks, in two steps.

o Step 1: Market orders (margin trades, short sales): 1 week

o Step 2: Limit and stop orders: 1 week

What software and data are required?

You will use the FTS Real Time Client (RTFTS)

o Windows: You can launch the FTS Real Time Client from the FTS System Manager

o Other: use the browser based version at http://www.rtfts.com

o You will need a trading name and password, assigned by your instructor

You may also need Excel for formulating and evaluating the results

How long is the report?

1 page executive summary

3 pages max describing the results

Other material in an appendix

http://www.rtfts.com/

http://www.ftsmodules.com/public/modules/ftssystemmanager/TeachingWithFTSRT.pdf


Question: How are stocks traded in the secondary markets?

Stocks are first issued in a “Primary Market,” for example through an IPO (initial public offering). Once

issued, they are traded in “Secondary Markets.” These include organized exchanges such as the New

York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and over-the-counter (OTC) markets. In any of these markets, buyers and

sellers negotiate a price through a process called price discovery and then trade at the negotiated price.

For example, on the NASD, price discovery is initiated by dealers who post bids and offers. On the NYSE,

price discovery is initiated by investors, but orders above a certain size are matched by a specialist who

can also trade on their personal account. Other markets, referred to as third and fourth markets, trade

exchange listed securities and are pure order driven markets, where price discovery is initiated by

investors and all matching of buyers and sellers is via an electronic network.

Common to these markets are various order types. The two most popular are market orders, and limit

orders. Market orders are “buy” or “sell” orders for a specified quantity at the best currently available

prices (the highest current bid and the lowest current ask). In a limit order traders specify both the

price and quantity they want to trade. A buy order is executed if the ask drops to the price, and a sell

order is executed if the bid rises to the price. A variation known as a stop order lets traders lock in their

profits or limit losses on existing positions.

Two other important institutional details are known as short sales and buying on margin. Short sales

allow traders to sell securities they do not currently own. To sell short, a trader is required to borrow

the securities from a broker and then sell the borrowed security; when they cover their short position,

the shares have to be returned. When buying on margin a trader borrows money from a broker to buy

the stock. Interest is charged on the loan, and has to be repaid when the stock is sold. If the value of

the stock falls sufficiently, the broker can make a margin call, which requires the trader to either deposit

more money into the account or to sell the stock.

The FTS Real Time Client allows you to implement these orders using real world institutional details.

Limit and stop orders are monitored by the system in real time and all positions are marked-to-market

daily; the marking to market can trigger off automatic cash transfers to cover margin calls. All the

accounting is performed automatically for you and the details of this accounting are available at any

time via the “Reports” menu item.

In this project you will learn how stocks are traded in the secondary markets and the details of these

order types using the FTS 30 stocks. To keep things interesting you will first form a simple price view for

three stocks in the FTS 30 index. A view is simply whether you expect a particular stock to increase or

decline in price. You can form your view in any way, e.g. thinking about short term economic trends,

looking at some price charts, or even just flipping a coin if nothing else leads to a prediction. In practice,

traders use many methods to develop their views, including technical analysis, news, and fundamental

analysis. In this project, it does not matter whether your view is correct.


Once you have formed your view on the three stocks, complete the following five steps; a detailed guide

of where you implement each step is below. You should read the “Getting Started” chapter for a quick

overview of how to log in and trade.

1. On day 1 implement the following trades for the three stocks: a Cash Purchase of stock 1, a

Margin Purchase of stock 2 and a Short Sale of stock 3, each for 100 shares.

2. After 5 days (or longer), close out the transactions implemented on day 1. That is, reverse your

trades by conducting a Cash Sale, Margin Sale and Short Cover respectively so you are now left

with no stocks either short or long.

3. Your cash account has now either increased or decreased over this time period. In this step,

reconcile how the transactions above changed your total cash. Pay particular attention to

interest paid on margin and short sale accounts and any margin calls, and also to transactions

costs charged on each trade.

4. Next, implement a limit order/stop order strategy. Given your price view of three stocks,

implement the following three trades: Limit Cash Purchase of stock 1, Limit Margin Purchase of

stock 2 and a Limit Short Sale of stock 3. After you observe your limit orders have been

executed then you should also put on the following “Stop Loss” trades – Stop Cash Sale, Stop

Margin Sale and Stop Short Cover. If you want to you can enter all these at the same time.

Note: For part 4 you should track recent price changes for the three stocks so that your

limit orders are placed at prices that have a reasonable chance of being executed. Your

goal for a limit order is to purchase or sell at a better price than is currently available.

Your goal for a stop (loss) order is to sell or cover a previous sale at a price that is worse

than the current price – hence the term “stop loss.” Of course the “stop loss” may imply

stopping the loss of a profit if prices have moved in your favor!

5. After you have successfully completed step 4, you have again cashed out of the three trades.

Again your cash has either increased or decreased relative to what it was at the beginning of

step 4. Reconcile how your transactions in step 4 changed your total cash.

After completing the above 5 steps, you will have gained important experience and understanding of

order types and how they are implemented and executed.


Details: Submitting Market Orders and Limit Orders

Market orders are submitted in the “Trade Securities” Tab on the bottom left of the screen. The easiest

way to trade is to double click on a security name in the Ticker window. For example, in the FTS 30

Stock Case:

In this case, if you double click on BAC, you will see quotes from public web sites on the right top. ASt

the bottom left, you will see:


You select order type from the drop-down in the middle, enter the quantity to trade, and then click

“Submit Order.” If you click the drop down, you will see the market orders available to you:

To close out a position, you simply do the opposite of the initial trade: reverse a cash purchase with a

cash sale, a margin purchase with a margin sale, and a short sale with a short cover.


A note on netting: Unless requested by the instructor, we net short and long positions. So if you bought

10 shares of a stock and then short sold 5, you would be left with 5 shares of the stock, the short sale

would netted against your long position.

Once you submit an order and the order is executed, you will see the results on the same screen. For

example, here are three trades: cash purchase of a stock, margin purchase of a stock, and short sale of a

third stock:

Cash Purchase: Select `Cash Purchase’ and click ‘Submit Order’

We start with $1m in cash and

You can see the cash purchase amount, the position value, and also the `Buy VWAP’; this is the volume-

weighted average price of purchases. Your cash position has dropped from $1m to $998,907.06, which

is the cost of buying the shares plus $9.95 in transactions costs.

Margin Purchase: Select `Margin Purchase’ and click `Submit Order’

We start over with $1m in cash and buy 100 shares of Chevron on margin:


Details of the margin account are shown. The last traded price in the example is $77.45. The price at

which the stock was bought (the ask price at the time of the trade execution) was $77.79 (this is shown

in the trade confirmation that was received; here we can also infer it from the Buy VWAP).

Margin requirements are calculated relative to the last traded price. Here, we started with $1m in cash.

There is a 50% margin. 100 shares at 77.79 would cost $7,779. The last traded price was $77.45, 100

shares at $77.45 are worth $7,745. The “broker” lends us 50% of this value, which is $3,872.50. This is

the margin ` loan.’ The actual cost was $7,778 and $3,872.50 was borrowed, so we had to pay the

difference, $3,909.50 from our cash. The position value is $3,872.50; this is calculated relative to the

last traded price; at that price, the 100 shares are worth $7,745 but we owe half of that (the margin

loan). So the position value is only $3,872.50.

Just below the margin loan, you see `Deposit.’ If the stock lost value, you would have to put up more

cash as collateral, and this would be shown as the deposit.


Let us reconcile our cash balance. We started with $1m and paid $3,909.50 for the margin purchase. So

we should have $996,093.5 in cash remaining. But we only have $996,083.56 (you can see that next to

US Dollar Cash Position). The difference is the transaction cost we paid, which in this case was $9.95,

and a small rounding error that works in your favor. You can find the history of your transactions costs

under the `Reports’ menu item. This is illustrated below, after we describe a short sale.

Short Sales: Select ‘Short Sell’ and click `Submit Order’

We again start with $1m in cash and short sell 100 shares of Walt Disney:

The short sales account details are shown. The shares were sold short at $33.62 per share. So the

proceeds from the sale were $3,362. Short sale regulations require that these proceeds be held by the

broker (shown above as `cash held’). In addition, the short sales margin is 50%, so you have to put up an


additional 50% of the amount, which is $1,681, shown as the `Deposit’. The position value is $1,652.

This is calculated relative to the last traded price, which was $33.91. If the short sale was covered (the

shares bought back) at this price, you would have to pay $3,391 to buy back the shares. But you would

get back the `cash held’ and the `deposit’ so the net amount would be -

$3,391+$3,362.50+$1,681=$1,652, which is shown as the position value.

Finally, the cash account: it started at $1m, the deposit of $1,681 was subtracted, and the transaction of

$9.95 cost was paid, resulting in the cash balance of $998,309.06. There is again a small rounding error

of 1c in your favor; the rounding occurs because, for example, we may receive a quote of 33.62 as

33.61999, and if you trade 100 or 1000 shares, it can create a small discrepancy.

Limit Orders

These are submitted from the Limit Order window, accessible from the menu’s at the top:

Click on `Limit and Stop Orders’ to get:


This is fairly easy. You type in the ticker, price and quantity, select the order type and the trade type,

and submit a new order. If you want to delete or modify an existing order, double click on an order,

then either click `Delete Existing Order’ it or change the price/quantity and click `Modify Existing Order.’

You can list all the tickers and select the one you want or enter part of a ticker and `Find Matching

Tickers’. As an aside, tickers are case sensitive; this is because exchanges re-use the letters in a ticker

and use lower and upper case letters to distinguish companies.

Limit orders you have entered are shown in this window and the information is updated whenever you

make any changes. If you want to make sure you have the latest information on limit orders, click

`Retrieve Orders.’ We show you the result of submitting a limit cash buy for Chevron at 75:


Limit orders are monitored all the time, even if you are not logged in. But they only execute if the price

condition is met (in this example, the price of Chevron must fall from the current 77.45 to 75 for this

order to execute). So if you put in unrealistic prices, the trades will not execute.

History

You can access your trading history from the `Reports’ menu at the top:

Select `Get Trading History and Reports’ to obtain the history. When it first comes up, shows everything

recorded for your account, including when you logged in and from where. It looks like this:


As an aside, what is under `Trader’ may be your trading name with something added at the. In this

example, the trading name is ss1g but djia is added at the end. This is because trader ss1g has multiple

trading accounts, and when they select the FTS 30 Stock Case, the system maps them to an internal

name of ss1gdjia. This way, the trader can have a single trading name and password for multiple

accounts.

The drop-down next to `Select Report’ lets you generate a variety of reports:


Select the report and click `Generate Report.’ P&L stands for profit and loss. You can see the

transactions costs paid. The margin/short sale activity shows you interest credited to the deposits and

interest charged on loans. After you have generated a report, you can export the table into Excel by

clicking on the button. Some of the reports, like end of day market values, can also be plotted.

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How Securities Are Traded - ftsmodules.com · How Securities Are Traded What is this project about? You will learn how securities are traded on exchanges, particularly how to conduct